AntiPigou

Iran, Low on Gasoline, to Be Supplied by Venezuela:

Iran, a major oil exporter, imports 40 percent of its gasoline because of high consumption and limited refining capacity. While gasoline costs about $2 a gallon on world markets, the government sells it for 34 cents, a subsidy that costs it about $5 billion a year.

And Kitchen Linker thought NoPigou was bad...

A big platform needs a big hole in the ground

Recently recommended Techcrunch transcribes a quote from the putative YouTube competitor from big media:

Chernin: this will be the largest advertising platform on earth.

Kitchen Linker's comment: A big platform is built on a big hole in the ground. This YouTube competitor is the hole in the ground.

High risk of housing BUST

Kitchen Linker doesn't like writing about the housing bubble, but sometimes the facts are too much. Take this paragraph from the San Jose Mercury News story on a National Association of Realtors survey:

The highest loan-to-value ratios for first-time buyers were in the South, where the median mortgage was 100 percent of the sale price. In the West, the median was 99 percent, in the Midwest 98 percent, and in the East, 96 percent.

By comparison, the typical repeat home buyer nationwide invested a median 16 percent as a down payment to purchase a replacement home -- typically from the proceeds of a prior sale -- and financed the remaining 84 percent.

Kitchen-mates, a price decline over the next year or two is going to put millions of home "owners" under water. Any increase in unemployment is going to send millions to the hills, or rather cheap apartments and parent's homes (think abut that recursively). Result: housing BUST.

Tax Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Venezuela

A hefty gas tax would initially be paid by American drivers. But as Americans became more fuel efficient as a result of the tax, the tax would be paid by oil producers. Read about tax incidence.

So the U.S. can replace taxes on goods with taxes on bads, save the environment, and make American foreign policy enemies pay the tax!

Kitchen Linker asks: Why are we not doing this already!?

$30/gallon water

Wired News (found here) on a very cool sounding technology Making Water From Thin Air has this:

The cost to transport water by C-17 cargo planes, then truck it to the troops, runs $30 a gallon. The cost, including the machines from Aqua Sciences, will be reduced to 30 cents a gallon, Roy said.

A single gallon jug of water costs about $1 at retail in the U.S. Maybe the money would be better spent improving Iraqi infrastructure so bulk commodities did not have to be flown in on cargo planes that are themselves boondoggles.

Penguin.swf

Well this is a little sad. I don't know if Adobe is taking the right approach with Flash 9 for Linux, but they sure are moving slowly. But what else do you expect? Linux still has a tiny share of the desktop market. Why should Adobe care?

All the Linux advocates carping at Adobe need to just pony up (money or time) for Gnash development, which is moving along.

Heterosexual divorce proves my point

Same-sex marriage foes say divorces prove their point:

"The separation of Julie and Hillary Goodridge is tragic not only for their daughter," the Rev. Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition said in a statement released the day after the couple confirmed the separation. "But ... they have clearly shown just how little they value the institution of marriage and provide a chilling look into what our nation faces if homosexual marriage is legalized elsewhere."

What, that homosexual marriages sometimes end in divorce, just like breeder marriages?

51 ways to make a difference

The Clinton Global Initiative lists 52 ways to make a difference. 51 are things that one can do individually in the home, workplace or community. One just doesn't belong:

Deploy MBAs in developing countries to build local health management.

Huh? How the heck am I supposed to "deploy MBAs"?

Now healthcare does need serious reegineering...

Orlando is DEAD

I don't plan to post much if at all about the housing bubblebust but this is too much, from CNN Money, Help! Home for Sale:

"We're planning on starting a family someday," says the 30-year-old Young, who builds simulation software for a defense contractor. "We wanted a bigger home - with a pool."

The new house cost $562,000 so they were really counting on profits from the old place to help. They had paid $167,000 for their current four bedroom, two-and-a-half bath, 2,861 square foot contemporary that they bought new, on the last day of 2002.

Young had improved the place over the years, putting in tile floors, chair rails, crown moldings and other amenities. The house has formal living and dining rooms and Young also installed a lovely Koi pond in the backyard with a rustic Japanese bridge.

Believing that the house would sell itself, Young decided to list it through Flat Rate Realty, a for-sale-by-owner operation that will place a property on the multiple listing service for a fee of $99. He priced it at $402,000.

The only calls he was getting were from realtors, who wanted to act as his agent.

...

They re-priced the house, lowering it to $369,000 and then to $349,000. They've had open houses that nobody attended; run advertisements that elicited no responses; and sent out flyers that were totally ignored.

In all its months on the market, the house has drawn only two lookers.

"One sounded like he was just doing research. He may not have been a legitimate buyer," says Young. And the other couple just walked away.

...

The number of homes on the market in Orange and Seminole Counties has skyrocketed, from 4,473 in July 2005 to 19,827 in July 2006, according to raw data drawn from Mid-Florida Regional Multiple Listing Service Hotsheet reports.

To know the problem is no consolation to the couple, who are increasingly feeling the stress. They have to make a decision soon about whether to go ahead with the purchase and hope they'll sell the old house, or give up the new place and lose their $28,000 deposit.

They are so out $28,000. Why the heck do they want an even bigger house? Four bedrooms and 2,861 square feet is huge. Are they Mormons?

Patent lawyer!?

So I'm not going to only link to Slashdot, but this from University of Virginia Student Graduates in One Year (quoting a WaPo story) is too much:

He says he may eventually pursue law school as a part-time student in hopes of becoming a patent lawyer.

Argh! What commenter brejc8 says:

This guy has some real potential, he could change the world, he could discover some fantastic advancements for the good of human kind, but no. He wants to be a lawyer.

In other news software patents are not that harmful and alternatives.

And read rethinking healthcare ... completely at TechDirt ... very relevant to the rest of this post.